Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...PRODUCERS. Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder play two Broadway producers in this disjointed and inconsistent movie, which, in spite of its many faults, occasionally rises to classic comic heights...
...Comic Dick Cavett is a menace. That low-key, gracious approach should fool nobody. He is a cool operator who plans to sweep the American housewife off her feet before she has a chance to sweep the floor. Hosting a new 90-minute daily talk show called This Morn ing on ABC, he has plunged into that grey Sargasso Sea of morning game shows and reruns, and already he's making steady, perceptible waves of laugh ter. There is something vaguely immoral about one-liners at 10:30 a.m., but Cavett has no respect. Amid...
...Hepburn enough to do in The African Queen. The romance pastoral is established, but only at the expense of character development: Huston piles close-ups of Bogart and Hepburn on top of one another, all impeccably framed by Cardiff, all suggesting nothing more than bovine contentment. Ultimately, the comic timing of Huston and his actors save The African Queen from tedium: Hepburn's superb reactions to Bogart's gin-swilling equal Bogart's own anguish at watching her dispose of it, bottle by bottle. Lines in the printed script easily passed-by become audience-stoppers: Bogart's apology...
...Braverman, a celebrated critic, dies suddenly at 41. Among the mourners are four of his friends: a flamboyantly mustachioed fund raiser (George Segal); a gruff, insecure womanizer (Jack Warden) who, upon hearing the bad news while in bed with his girl, dutifully removes his toupee; an oleaginous scholar of comic books (Sorrell Booke); and a Talmudic professor-lecturer (Joseph Wiseman) who wears an expression of perpetual disgust, as if he were forever smelling fried...
That is the script's main-and almost only-joke. As the story's central character, Actor Segal shows flashes of a comic talent hitherto unexplored by Hollywood. But what picture there is for stealing is burgled by Wiseman with his portrayal of a stereotypical literateur. As lofty as Edmund Wilson, he pronounces Jehovah-like judgments on literature and humanity, while for his livelihood, he caters to audiences of culture-ridden housewives who beg, "Please, my Debbie wanted me to ask you about Philip Roth...